Ryan Sherriff was dominant, striking out five of the seven hitters he faced and not allowing a base runner. He’s a lefty who throws sidearm with a nasty slider, and profiles as a LOOGY. The Cardinals aren’t lacking for lefties out of the bullpen, though, as they are currently carrying Brett Cecil, Tyler Lyons, Kevin Siegrist, and Zach Duke. Tyler O’Neill is hitting .304/.306/.674, and homered against his former team last night. I love his power, but until I see a better K/BB ratio, he’s just a better version of Randal Grichuk to me.
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Austin Gomber turned in his finest performance of the year on Friday. He showed good command of his curveball, which can be more 11-7 than 12-6 at times. The key for me was his fastball; he was able to get swings and misses with it. Despite velocity that sits in the low 90’s, he’s deceptive because of his funky delivery. He can be emotional on the mound at times, and last night he used it to his advantage. Quite frankly, he reminded me of Carpenter/Lackey/Lynn on the mound, chirping at umpires and getting fired up after big strikeouts.

There’s not much to say about the Peoria offense right now. They’re the only team in the Cardinals system that doesn’t feature a Top 30 position player in their lineup, and it shows. Their staff took a hit this week when Ryan Helsley was promoted to Springfield. Connor Jones, drafted in 2016 out of Virginia, has really improved since the All-Star break: he had a 4.75 ERA before the break and a 3.38 ERA after.

Stefan Trosclair hit for the cycle, which is cool. There’s not enough room to mention every Peoria hitter who had a good game last night. J.R. Davis, Juan Yepez, and Matt Fiedler each had multi-hit games, and Yepez had four hits and two doubles. Ronnie Williams took one step forward last week, but two steps back last night. He got the win, but that says more about pitcher’s wins than it does about Williams. #KillTheWin.

That’s two consecutive games in which Delvin has gotten on base twice and had a clean game in the field and on the bases. Seeing a stolen base is encouraging too since he’s been picked off a few times. It’d be nice for Delvin to build some momentum over the last month of 2017 and carry that into next year.